The Racial Contract: An Academic Amendment

• In Event: "I Can't Breathe": Police Killings of Black Men and the Quest for Justice of Black Boys in School

Abstract

Social Contract theory attempts to offer how humans came into society—to form a polity—from the state of nature for the purpose of governance for protection. In this transition from the state of nature, one consents to lay certain rights at the feet of the sovereign—government—in exchange for protection that guarantee other rights. This is what, for many Americans, establish their “rights” as a citizen of the United States of America. Taxes, tradition, and their birth-right grants them a type of protection that doesn’t exist in outside of their polity. The application of the Social Contract leads us to believe that as a member of a polity, one receives equal protection as the price of admission to the polity is assumed equal. For instance, an encounter with law enforcement should develop the same for all people of the polity. It would stem from protection or an encounter that is dignified or “civil”. However, for the polity’s Black citizens—particularly Black males—this is not the case.
Driving, jogging, sleeping, yelling, parking, sitting in one’s vehicle, selling cd’s, selling cigarettes, wearing a hoodie at night, lying on the ground, being in a dark stair well, having a broken taillight, exercising horses, having a bottle of prescription pills, picking up trash on one’s property, shopping, and throwing a sandwich at a teacher are all real instances in which the Social Contract ceased to apply to all. During these instances law enforcement held Black men at gunpoint, shot them to later die, shoot and killed them, or killed them by restringing their breathing by illegal “warrior” maneuvers or kneeling on their chest/neck. Black males—young and old—experience something vastly in opposition to dignity or rights guaranteed in the Social Contract.
As a critique to the common understanding of the Social Contract, Charles Mills (1997) present an updated revision in the form of the Racial Contract. He highlights the political, moral, and epistemological nature of the contract used by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants to justify the denial of rights under the Social Contract. The sub-humanization of minoritized people constructs a caveat of the social contract that empowers white supremacy and deferent treatment of minoritized people as the logic follows—one cannot be harmed or treated different if he is not the same.
Using Mills’ frameworks, this paper intends to interrogate and highlight the discursive surrounding shooting and killing of unarmed Black males by law enforcement. In particularly it will connect the rationale of the polity—the U.S.— directly to Mills’ tenants of the Racial Contract. Furthermore, as schools are a reflection of society (Bowles & Ginitis, 1976) the polity’s narrative of Black males as less than human and the application of the Racial contract is enforced and normalized in schools spaces. School resources officers, school leaders, and teachers dehumanize black male students to manage and surveille Black male bodies. This paper intends to examine how the Racial Contract unfolds in schools for Black male students.

Author

• Victor Carter, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities